On July 27, Qualcomm held the Snapdragon Gaming Technology Awards event on the eve of ChinaJoy, which was not only a warm-up for the upcoming ChinaJoy, but also a display of its hard-core strength and powerful ecological energy in the field of mobile games to the outside world.
Qualcomm expands new boundaries of mobile gaming
The mobile game industry is the undisputed “star” in the game market in the past two years. According to a report from an industry research institute, in 2022, global players will spend about $92 billion on mobile games, accounting for 50% of the global game industry’s revenue, almost twice that of console games and PC games. The global mobile game market has also grown at an astonishing rate in the past seven years, with the market size increasing by four times since 2015. Among them, in 2022, the sales revenue of mobile games in China accounted for nearly 73% of the total revenue of the Chinese game industry, and the market size expanded by six times.
The hot mobile game market seems to be driven by the continuous iteration of mobile phone manufacturers and the continuous update of game products, but in fact, Qualcomm is the one behind mobile phone manufacturers and game developers. Snapdragon chips have always been the pioneers of innovation in the field of mobile game technology.
At the Snapdragon Gaming Technology Awards, Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager of mobile, computing, and XR business at Qualcomm Technologies, said that more than 95 flagship Android smartphones equipped with the second-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform have been released, each of which can bring excellent gaming performance, allowing users to enjoy the Snapdragon Elite Gaming features at their fingertips. Snapdragon Elite Gaming is a collection of top gaming technologies supported by the Snapdragon 8 series mobile platform, which can make games run faster, more colorful, and provide cool end-game-level lighting effects. These technologies have been widely used, and more than 1 billion mobile terminals support Snapdragon Elite Gaming features.
It is not only about helping terminal manufacturers in terms of chips, but also about fully combining technological innovation, industrial cooperation and user needs to create a more accurate and efficient gaming experience that lives up to players’ expectations. Therefore, Qualcomm continues to work with its ecosystem partners to expand the possibilities of mobile games. As a long-term and close partner of Qualcomm, Hu Zhipeng, senior vice president of NetEase Group and head of NetEase Leihuo Game Business Group, not only reviewed the deep cooperation history between NetEase and Qualcomm in mobile game technology, but also mentioned that the two parties have brought NetEase’s new game “All-Star Streetball Party” to more categories of terminals based on the Snapdragon platform, presenting players with a cross-terminal innovative experience across automobiles, mobile phones and handheld platforms, and looking forward to working with Qualcomm in the future to bring more high-quality gaming experiences to players.
Qualcomm upgrades mobile gaming experience
For mobile games, powerful performance is a key link to ensure the experience, and the performance advantage of Snapdragon processors meets this feature of mobile games very well. In particular, the CPU of the second-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform supports a main frequency of up to 3.36GHz, and the GPU performance is improved by 45% compared with the previous generation platform. According to Qualcomm laboratory test data, in miHoYo’s latest game masterpiece “Honkai Impact 3” mobile game, at a rendering resolution of 760P, the average frame rate of the second-generation Snapdragon 8 Leading Edition can reach 60.15fps after 30 minutes of continuous gaming. The gaming experience is very smooth throughout the whole process, fully demonstrating the “hardcore performance” strength of Snapdragon.
Qualcomm’s advantage in mobile gaming is not only in core performance, but also in targeted optimization. For example, Snapdragon Game Super Resolution. This is Snapdragon’s super-resolution technology based on spatial information. It mainly enhances the gaming experience from four dimensions: improving resolution while maintaining visual quality of graphics; increasing frame rate for a smoother gaming experience; reducing power consumption for longer battery life; and improving visual fidelity while maintaining frame rate. Currently, Tencent Games, NetEase Games, and Lightyear are all introducing Snapdragon Game Super Resolution technology.
Another example is real-time ray tracing. The second-generation Snapdragon 8 supports hardware-based real-time ray tracing for the first time. Now, Qualcomm and Tencent Games have explored the results of the mobile game lighting effect technology – global illumination. In comparison, traditional local illumination technology can only consider the places where the light source is directly illuminated, while global illumination technology can take into account the situation where the light source bounces multiple times on the surface of the object. According to his introduction, the Tencent game engine team cooperated with Qualcomm on global illumination technology, based on the hardware ray tracing capabilities of the second-generation Snapdragon 8, to introduce realistic lighting effects that could only be achieved on PC or high-end game consoles in the past to the mobile terminal, and demonstrated the lighting effects that can currently be achieved on mobile phones on site.
Another example is the graphics API. Snapdragon mobile platforms have always been the first to support the most advanced graphics APIs. The second-generation Snapdragon 8 already supports the latest Vulkan 1.3. As a replacement for OpenGL, Vulkan can better hand over the control of the driver to developers, support multi-threading, and thus use the CPU more efficiently and reduce the load. Thanks to the support of the Snapdragon mobile platform for this technology, Vulkan has gradually become the priority adaptation object for new models.
Referring to the cooperation between Qualcomm and the game studio on Vulkan, Yao Yifei said that in the past three years, Qualcomm and the game “Peak Drive” have carried out in-depth cooperation in the field of technology, such as calling the variable resolution rendering technology (VRS) in the game to facilitate the support of the new graphics API Vulkan. The two parties worked closely together to bring out the best performance of the CPU, GPU and other modules of the Snapdragon mobile platform, combined with the excellent light and shadow effects of “Peak Drive” itself, to add icing on the cake for the ultimate experience. In “Peak Drive”, Vulkan can save 15~18% of power consumption compared to the OpenGL ES version.
In addition, Snapdragon Elite Gaming is also a technology that Qualcomm has been promoting in recent years. Today, Snapdragon Elite Gaming is constantly upgraded, and it can enable mobile game players to truly enjoy a gaming experience comparable to that of PC games, and play 3A masterpieces on their mobile phones. “The latest generation of Snapdragon Elite Gaming supported by the second-generation Snapdragon 8 unlocks new features including Snapdragon Game Super Resolution, hardware-based real-time ray tracing, and support for the latest graphics API Vulkan 1.3.
In addition to chip-level optimization, Qualcomm has also made more optimizations in network and audio latency. The first upgraded Wi-Fi 7 on the network and terminal sides brings players a true end-to-end connection experience; in places without high-speed Wi-Fi coverage, 5G can also escort it. Snapdragon Sound technology integrates a series of Qualcomm’s best audio technologies and connection innovations, which can provide strong assistance for listening to sound and positioning.
Pushing the boundaries of digital entertainment experience
When it comes to mobile gaming, Qualcomm’s empowerment does not stop at smartphones. During this event, Qualcomm demonstrated that Snapdragon has expanded from smartphones to more areas such as PCs, handhelds, XR, and automobiles. The Snapdragon ecosystem it has built is breaking the boundaries of digital entertainment experience, giving players the opportunity to enjoy the game anytime, anywhere, and across terminals.
In this regard, Qualcomm said that they will showcase their progress in more fields at this ChinaJoy. For example, in the field of VR, Qualcomm will present users with a vivid and interesting “Snapdragon XR Fantasy Journey”. It is understood that this is an immersive entertainment project created using digital entertainment content created by GVR, combined with Snapdragon sports seats, PICO 4 Pro VR glasses and Xiaomi tablets, and wireless multi-terminal linkage is achieved through Wi-Fi 6, bringing ultra-low latency and extremely immersive XR gaming experience.
In the hot smart car field, Qualcomm also has a forward-looking layout. It is reported that Qualcomm cooperated with HiPhi Auto and NetEase Games Leihuo Studio to integrate the resources and technical advantages of their respective fields to create an immersive entertainment experience across smart terminals. This means that in the ChinaJoy Snapdragon Theme Pavilion, we can experience the HiPhi Y (presented on the co-pilot screen, with a game controller) using the Snapdragon platform, and play the latest streetball competitive game created by NetEase Games Leihuo Studio – “All-Star Streetball Party”.
At this year’s ChinaJoy, Qualcomm will work with operators, global leading smartphone manufacturers, game studios, electric vehicle manufacturers, e-commerce and other industry heavyweight partners to create the Snapdragon theme pavilion for the fourth time, bringing 11 major brand booths. Qualcomm Global Vice President Hou Mingjuan highlighted the highlights of the Snapdragon booth: “At the upcoming ChinaJoy, we will work with 89 partners and brands to bring more than 100 technical experiences and demonstrations; the Snapdragon booth will also stage the Snapdragon Esports Pioneer Elite Invitational Finals; the ‘Snapdragon JD Super Category Day’ will also be a surprise; for Snapdragon friends, mobile game players, e-sports enthusiasts and consumers, a panoramic view of the excellent mobile games and cross-terminal digital entertainment experience enabled by Snapdragon will be presented.”
